A ‘minor distraction’?

In the Stabroek News of August 15, there was a report on the Trey Songz show at the Stadium. All the media in Guyana celebrated the ecstasy and joy which patrons had at the show. The SN report though also reported, “His performance, at one point, literally drove the ladies wild as a fight broke out and a woman was stabbed to the neck. But this was only a minor distraction in an intense, raunchy, hour of Songz.”

The violence one reads, seemed to be a part of that intensity, and raunchiness, but as faithfully reported – a minor distraction.

The reporter in another time might have reported differently: that the audience turned their backs on a reality to the major distraction on the stage that night.

One wonders whether our economic development could be measured in terms of the intense distractions provided for us, fuelled by the private sector and supported and even endorsed by the government sometimes. A recent announcement from Dr Luncheon of another ‘mega concert’ for the International Year of People of African Descent, and the youths have been promised after their history lesson by President Jagdeo, another mega event with lots of celebrities in September – all of these no doubt intended to show us that the shows could go one regardless of what else is happening in the country. The political parties do not speak out, because we are all united in the desperate need to be distracted from our realities.

Some people in Guyana are probably happy that when people are killed, beaten, brutalized, and there is no justice, there are no thousands roaring or screaming or protesting with the wild intensity which is reserved for the Stadium.

The other media did not report on this minor distraction. The major distractions though, will no doubt continue and get the attention that they deserve.